Local News Departments

[Sid Schweiger]

>>At one time the failure to have a local news department could have
been used 
to challenge the licensee for it license at renewal time. WRKO's at one
time 
sister station WNAC lost its license to a group for not acting in the
public 
interest, or was it WHDH?<<

Both WNAC and WHDH (the original Channel 5, not today's Channel 7) had
changes of ownership forced on them:

The General Tire & Rubber Company's broadcast operation, RKO-General,
was "invited" to vacate the broadcasting business after the parent
company was convicted in federal court of bribery.  As a necessary cost
of doing business overseas, GT&E routinely made payments to governments.
 Although perfectly legal overseas, it was illegal in the US (even
though no such payments were made in the US) and they got nabbed for it.
 The conviction made them unfit to be licensees.

A principal owner of The Herald-Traveler Corporation, owners of WHDH-TV,
had an ex parte contact with an FCC commissioner during hearings on the
original grant of the license for Channel 5 in Boston in 1957, and at
the end of the (at that time) longest regulatory case in US history,
lost the license to Boston Broadcasters, Inc., which put WCVB-TV on the
air in 1972.  Even though the commissioner in question refused to
discuss the case with the H-TC officer, every court that heard the case
either remanded the decision to the FCC, or in the case of the federal
appeals court and the US Supreme Court, found that the improper contact
was reason enough to deny the H-TC the license.  The case is chronicled
in "The Hundred Million Dollar Lunch," by Sterling "Red" Quinlan.

Neither one had to do directly with any lack of public service.



Sid Schweiger
IT Manager, Entercom New England
WAAF - WEEI AM/FM - WKAF - WMKK - WRKO - WVEI AM/FM
20 Guest St / 3d Floor
Boston MA  02135-2040
Phone: 617-779-5369
Fax: 617-779-5379
E-Mail: sid@wrko.com